Dear Selma Elisabeth Carvalho,
Thank you for your quick reply.
You feel that Christians should not feel themselves superior to others,
because they have the Bible,
nor do you think that your opinion is superior to mine,
let me correct your statements in the light of Christian teaching,
since for me Bible is the Word of God in the words of human authors.
You say: >>We are in complete agreement here. The Bible is at
best a quasi-historical and literary document and if
one wishes to imbibe lessons from it, then one is at
liberty to do so. I also imbibe equally powerful
lessons reading the Greek myths, but at no point do I
consider any of them to be divinely inspired.
* Yes, we are in agreement that Bible was written in a culture by men.
There are
all literary genres in the Bible. There are historical books as well as
books of fiction.
God can reveal through any literary genre. But I would disagree with you
that it is merely a
human document. God has 'inspired' it with his action in human history.
Israel has God-experience.
Bible has given expression to this faith-experience.
You cannot put it in the same platform as Greek or Mesopotamian myths.
The differences are striking: Nothing of the origin of the gods or of a
cosmic conflict between gods,
as it is found in the Mesopotamian myth of creation, Epic of Gilgamesh.
Yahweh is God, Creator through his Word. There is
'mythopoeic thought' in the Old Testament. But through the first pages of
Genesis we perceive the transcendental
Reality of God, attributed by the Israelites themselves to Revelation, to a
personal encounter with God, their Saviour
and their Judge.
Myth arises in cultures in which logical discourse has not been achieved.
But myth is never entirely expelled even in advanced
cultures. It remains the most apt form for the expression of transcendental
reality,
too large and too profound for scientific
observation and philosophical analysis. Mythology is the beginning of
philosophy.
Reading the Greek myths has never been a
faith-experience as reading the Bible. Bible is not just a moralizing book.
Bible has been the most published book in the world.
You say: > So to get back to the point I was making, it is
impossible for two differing positions to be tenable
concurrently. One either believes that the Bible is a
book written by earthly writers who are subject to
their own human perceptions and limitations of
knowledge that exist at the time, or one believes that
the Bible was Divinely inspired, ergo everything in it
has to be infallible, right down to keeping slaves,
sacrificing your daughters or sons, and so on and so
forth.
*Yes, the Bible is written by human authors, but God is the Originator.
Your concept of biblical inspiration is wrong.
Bible itself speaks of divine inspiration: 2 Tim 3:16-17: "All scripture
is inspired by God
and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for
training in righteousness,
that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work". Vatican
II puts it as follows:
""Those divinely revealed realities, which are contained and presented in
Sacred Scripture have been
committed to writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Holy Mother
Church, relying on the belief
of the apostles, holds that the books of both OT and NT in their
entirety, with all their parts, are sacred
and canonical because, having been written under the inspiration of the
Holy Spirit .they have God as
their author and have been handed on as such to the church herself. In
composing the sacred books,
God chose men and while employed by him they made use of their powers and
faculties, so with him acting
in them and through them, they, as true authors, conÂsigned to writing
everything and only those things
which He wanted. Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired
authors or sacred writers must be
held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of
Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching
firmly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted put
into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation"(Dei Verbum,
no.11)
In sum my point is, Christianity is A religion. It is
not superior to any other religion, in fact it hardly
stands the test of wisdom when compared with what say
Socrates or Pythagoras had to offer circa the same
period of time. When we get over the supremacy of any
religion, I think we can embrace spirituality with
much more passion.
*There is no comparison between Socrates/Pythagoras and the Bible. Socrates
lived his principles and paid for them with his life.
We need biblical spirituality.
On this note I would like to add that by and large,
most Christians have already gotten over the need to
feel superior and are in fact quite secular and
tolerant in their outlook.
*Let the Christian people not feel superior to anybody, but give witness in
words and deeds before everybody.
Fr.Ivo
--- "Fr. Ivo da C. Souza" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Dear Selma Elizabeth Carvalho,
I respect your opinion. But it is wrong to say
that Bible TEACHES that
Eve was created out of Adam's rib. This is a
symbolic description to show
that the woman has equal rights as the male.
*Bible does not teach that Eve was created out of Adam's rib, but the
dignity of the women--woman is not inferior to male.
